Preparing for a Joanne Sharpe Class

Preparation

We finally got home to Florida...a week ago Sunday night.  An uneventful but exhausting 3 days and 2 nights down from northern Illinois.

I think we slept for two days straight enjoying our OWN bed again!

Then we woke up and discovered nothing was unpacked...you apparently have to do that yourself.  😉

So that took 5-6 days (with lots of interruptions).  So now I trying to figure out how everything in the studio actually FITS in here.  Stacks everywhere.  Sigh.

In between I am preparing the material list for Joanne Sharpe's class up in The Villages next week.  Thus all the pens collected on the table tonight.  I didn't have to buy any new pens as I am a pen freak anyway.  I just bought some wc paper that she suggested and some commercial washi tape...although I really like my own hand painted tape better.  And will take that too.  

I really let the Inktober challenge fall through the cracks.  Darn.

Once I got in the car and headed down I just could not figure out when to do it.  It is fun to look at the sketchbook and I need to start back into this.  Then friend, Sandee, sent me her marvelous ink sketches and boo hoo, I wish I was sketching too!  

Tomorrow I am meeting with a group planning to paint a mural by our swimming pool this winter.  Friend, Susan, has invited me to join the Friday morning class at the center for the arts on the 10th to see an Urban Sketcher give a demo.  Love urban sketching.  And I am prepping to do an art interview on local in-house TV channel THIS Friday morning.  I am beginning to see some actual space on my art table...that's a hopeful sign.  

Don't give up on me.  I'll be "arting" again soon.

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!

Sonder

My daughter's blog featured a new word today.

Sonder.

Is it a real word?...I guess it just depends on how you come to define words..as someone said...every word is made up at some point. Until it become real due to usage.

I like the idea of "sonder"...a word my computer's internal dictionary certainly does NOT recognize.   It is a small word for a very thoughtful and complex meaning.  

And I like that it causes you to reflect.  As I am in the midst of traveling now heading from WI to FL and amidst so many new people...it is a great travel word.  

sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

I found a tiny video that I think really is THE best definition for this word.  Take a look here.  See what you think.  

Inktober Drawing Challenge Day 1-3

Inktober is a wildly popular event each year with artists.  Just a fun encouragement to draw with ink every day for 31 days.  

There are many "prompt" lists... there is the official one but then lots of groups post their own prompts.  Last year I used the official list and it was sort of challenging to try to get something each time that fit.  But this year I am a bit lazy and am in the throes of the annual packing up from our north woods cabin to Florida.  

So I've decided that I am going to post every 3 days or so and am going to do 1/3 of a sketch at a time.  The idea being I'll have a page sketch every 3 days.  But I warn you this is just an idea that could go out the door as things get crazier here.

 So the above inked drawing is a very sketchy view of one wall of our cabin drawn in 3 parts over 3 days.  (That funny snowshoe shaped thing on the far left is actually a grill for grilling fish!).  

Some artists like to draw with graphite first and ink over.  Makes for a little more planning freedom but I am just carrying on right in ink for time's sake. Hoping I'll get better in 31 days.  By the last day I'll be in Florida again so you get a sort of travel journal of the trip.  

Fun fact about today:

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII declared that the day following October 4, 1582, would be Friday, October 15, 1582. By leaping over 10 days, the pope corrected the Julian calendar, which was 10 days out of sync with the seasons. The new calendar became known as the Gregorian calendar.